Productivity through CADCAM integration

Meccanica Pi.Erre S.r.l, located in Brescia, Italy is a European leader in trimming-finishing technologies for a wide variety of castings and high-pressure die castings. With over 25 years experience, Meccanica Pi.Erre offer the complete service from design to pre-production for all types and size of casting, including trimming tools (with or without machining units), dedicated trimming machines and trimming-deburring presses. After recent expansion in 2008, the Meccanica Pi.Erre facility has increased to 3,500 sqm to cope with growing demand and now manage a production capacity of over 10,000 working hours per month.

Started in 1983 by Ruggero Pedrezoli, Meccanica Pi.Erre has always been innovative with the use of technology and was an early adopter of CADCAM technology in 1988 for Wire EDM. Originally starting with the design and production of dies, Meccanica Pi.Erre soon began to specialise in the development of trimming tools for aluminium and magnesium die castings before including mechanical machining such as hole drilling and sawing operations. In 2000, the design and manufacture of trimming presses was added to the product line to complete their offering for the trimming technology sector with a major focus on suppliers to the automotive industry.

"After working with Vero and their technical staff we have changed our approach to everyday jobs and have defined a company workflow standard that was not clear before - The result is an improvement in service and quality.”

Ivano Scalvenzi

Ivano Scalvenzi, Technical Manager of Meccanica Pi.Erre explains how the use of constantly updated in-house design and production technology has helped them remain competitive. “We produce about 200 moulds per year, each with more than 100 parts made of both standard and not standard components. The types of tool we produce differ greatly in terms of design and machining from one to another because each tool is specific to a particular product. This production flexibility had to be mirrored by our CADCAM system.

Two years ago we decided to replace our previous parametric CAD system because it was difficult to use, had a long learning curve and was proving to be inadequate with our very fast working rate. These unsatisfactory working processes also created problems with production quality checking anomalies” continues Scalvenzi.

“After lengthy evaluations of multiple CAD/CAM solutions we selected VISI from Vero Software because it was a totally integrated system, powerful, easy to use and ideally matched our company requirements. After the initial training, we had 6 VISI stations fully operational within the first few months”.

The technical department are now using VISI Modelling, VISI Analysis and VISI Mould for all design projects. Importantly, the VISI products are directly interfaced with the quality management system which was developed in collaboration with the university of Brescia and Bergamo and is certified under the UNI EN ISO 9001:2000 standard.

Manufacture
Once the tool design is complete, the 3D data is distributed to the CAM department for toolpath generation. The shop-floor is separated into machining zones with areas dedicated to different machining processes such as milling, drilling and Wire EDM. The plant list includes 11 CNC machines with a machining envelope up to 2000x1000x1000mm, 3 of which are high-speed with pallet changers.

The integration of VISI Machining and Compass technology in the toolroom has provided technology benefits and delivered major productivity increases explains Andrea Pontoglio, CAM Manager. "By using VISI we have entirely removed the need for paper drawings typically associated with tool design. Now we work only with electronic data which is a great advantage in terms of speed, accuracy and flexibility. For a complex tool, we have witnessed a time reduction of at least 5 days per tool. VISI uses a single file format and the system environment is the same for all users - The flow of information is transparent to internal users and there are no longer any data conversion errors when transferring data between departments."

Compass Technology
Based on user-defined rules, VISI has created a new working philosophy that optimises the production process and obtains the best performances for the machine tool in any situation dramatically reducing the programming costs and production times. Drilling cycles and CAM operations generated using Compass technology are optimised for the selected machine tool including validation against the actual technological & mechanical characteristics of the CNC machine and tool crib. The result is that CAM toolpaths are always accurate and aligned to the current resources available.

"For a complex plate we have reduced programming times from 2 hours to just a few minutes using Compass technology" claims Pontoglio. "The use of VISI Machining and Compass has allowed us to construct our own company standards for machining purposes which is very important as we always have to cope with different product types. It is essential to automate our production process. Since the introduction of VISI in all departments, the production quality checking anomalies have been reduced by more than 80%.”

Concluding, Ivano Scalvenzi, Technical Manager explains, "After working with Vero and their technical staff we have changed our approach to everyday jobs and have defined a company workflow standard that was not clear before - The result is an improvement in service and quality. We believe the partnership with Vero was an excellent strategic choice and has helped drive our success and will ensure we will remain competitive in such difficult times ahead".

Integration between VISI Products and company project management software

Single environment for tool design & manufacture

Automated toolpath construction based on Compass Technology

Company standard definition for design & machining processes

Comments:

"After working with Vero and their technical staff we have changed our approach to everyday jobs and have defined a company workflow standard that was not clear before - The result is an improvement in service and quality.”